


Little Pieces of Time

by doyouhearthunder



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, In which Max literally loves Chloe to the end of time and back, or at least to the end of time, pricefield
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-23 03:17:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6103081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doyouhearthunder/pseuds/doyouhearthunder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max learns the hard way that everything has its breaking point.  Even time.</p><p>Just as she wakes from her nightmare at the end of Episode 5, Max is thrown into an uncontrollable rewind along her personal timeline.  Reliving scenes from her past, she realizes what matters most to her; but will she be able to find her way back through time?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Pieces of Time

“Come on, Max, we’re almost there! Please wake up!”  
  
Max Caulfield, standing on the far edge of a nightmare, pushing forwards to reality, mere steps away from waking, from Chloe, from the _end_.  
  
She extends her hand out towards the center of her universe, and the ground lurches underneath her feet. The image of Chloe and her own unconscious body, just out of reach, blur and leap away into the distance, a tiny pinprick in a sea of endless nothingness.  
  
For a brief, eternal moment she rushes through an airless void, a tiny human train moving backwards through a vast and pitch-black tunnel. Then the empty space around her explodes into light. Her eyes are bombarded with flashes of the past, swirling shapes and images, familiar scenes playing out in reverse all around her like strips of film run backwards through a projector. A spiral uncoiling of its own accord, beyond her control.  
  
It’s unlike any rewind Max has experienced before, and not just in its intensity. Something’s not right. As the glimpses continue and her brain acclimates slightly to processing the information speeding past her senses, it begins to dawn on her what the difference is. She isn’t experiencing these reverse-motion scenes from her own viewpoint, as she normally does when rewinding time, but from outside of it, like a disembodied ghost. And as she focuses on the events flying past her, she notices ones that shouldn’t be reachable through a rewind at all. She sees herself, standing in an art gallery in San Francisco. Herself, wrists and ankles bound to a chair in Jefferson’s dark room. Herself, kneeling by the bedside of a dying and disabled Chloe.  
  
_This isn’t a rewind through the current timeline_ , Max realizes, with a shock. _This is a rewind through_ my _timeline_.  
  
With the exception of her photograph-enabled time jumps, all her previous rewinds were tethered to her current point in space. But now she’s moving through space and time, speeding backwards along the tracks of her own life. The realization sends waves of panic through her. In desperation she flings both arms out in front of her, willing the stream of time she’s caught in to reverse its flow, but even when she had control of her power, she could only ever move in one direction. There’s no going forwards.  
  
_I can’t control my power anymore_ , she thinks, horrified. _But…if this is my timeline…I can’t just keep rewinding forever, right? What’s gonna happen to me if this doesn’t stop? And Chloe…the storm…oh god, I need to go back! I need to go back, make it stop, I need to go BACK!_  
  
Max brings her arms up to her head, digs her fingers into the hair on the back of her skull, and squeezes her eyes shut. Thirty seconds later and a quarter of a lifetime previously, she opens them again. Something’s changed. The whirlwind of time has stopped, its rapid reverse-chronological movement replaced with slow, normal forwards motion. She blinks, takes in her familiar surroundings. Whirling, her eyes fall upon a scene she never expected to see again outside of memory.  
  
13-year-old Max, standing before her best friend in the back yard of Chloe’s house on a cloudy December morning in 2008, grasping for the words to say goodbye. 14-year-old Chloe, morose and withdrawn in sullen silence, avoiding Max’s eyes, facing a moment she had known was coming but had hoped never would.  
  
“Chloe…” Max awkwardly begins, trying to bridge the gap already forming between them. “I’m sorry I have to go, I don’t want to, but…” She fumbles, swallows the words _that’s just the way it is_ , knowing before she says it that it’s not enough. She had railed against moving to Seattle when her parents had broken the news to her, no matter how calmly they had explained that her mother’s lucrative new job opportunity there was too good for the family to pass up. In truth, though, part of her was excited by the thought of a new life in the big city. Max had always said she wanted adventure, after all. She had just never pictured those adventures taking place without her best friend by her side.  
  
“I’ll write you! I’ll write you letters, and we’ll talk on the phone, it’ll be just like I’m still there with you, I promise!”  
  
Chloe glances up, the glimmer of excitement that once lit up her eyes dulled by months of grief. She meets her best friend’s sincere, pleading eyes for what might be the last time, and feels something shatter inside her. “Don’t go…” she whispers, so softly that Max leans in closer to hear. “Please don’t go, don’t leave me, not you too.” Voice cracking on the last word, the floodgates finally break, and the distance between them vanishes. Both girls are crying now, holding on tight to their precious final moments of inseparability. “I just...” Chloe chokes out between sobs, “I just wish we had more time.” And Max, through her tears, holds on to her old life with everything she has and whispers “I’m sorry…I’m so sorry.”  
  
But gradually, the moment ends, as all moments must, and they pull apart, facing each other on the border of an irreversible change. “I won’t forget about you, Chloe,” Max tells her, with all the conviction of a child making promises they can’t keep. “We’ll see each other again one day.” And Chloe smiles weakly and nods, but she has learned far too soon that the future has no guarantees, and she needs her best friend now, not ‘one day.’  
  
The sound of a sliding door opening brings their awareness of the world around them crashing back, as Max’s parents and Joyce step gently out into the back yard. “Maxine, honey, it’s time.”  
  
The young Max and Chloe lock eyes one final time, as time itself freezes around them. And Max Caulfield, the echo of past tears reflected in her 18-year-old eyes, watches her childhood friend pulled away from her yet again, as time sweeps her up in its raging hurricane once more. The recollection blurs back into the flood of shapes and colors surrounding her, leaving Max alone with the guilt gnawing at her stomach. _I_ promised _her_ , she thinks, _and I never kept that promise. Some best friend I am. I should have called, or written, should have been there for her in some way, but no, I just disappear on her, I get caught up in my own life while Chloe’s is falling to pieces and I forget about her, I just let her go, I don’t do a thing to help her until -_  
  
She pauses mid-thought. _Until what? Did we find each other again because we were meant to be together? Or is it the opposite, is this happening to me now because fate or time or some higher power wants to keep us apart? Everything that’s happened this past week, everything I’ve done, trying to make up for lost time, to make things okay between us again…and it ends like this? Why is this happening?_  
  
Her life continues to flash by her, moving further backwards into the grainy projections of her childhood, until with a sudden jolt the rush of time around her stops and she finds herself watching another scene from memory unfold, a preserved moment in time, just as she recalls it.  
  
Max Caulfield, on her first day of 13 years old, running along the smooth sand of the Arcadia Bay beach on a warm September day alongside 14-year-old Chloe.  
  
“Come on, Max! We gotta find the buried treasure map before Blackbeard and his crew get there first!”  
  
“Right behind you!” Max shouts back, bare feet pounding away at the warm sand, sprinting to keep up.  
  
Chloe comes to a halt by a large, distinctive piece of driftwood where an X is drawn in the sand as Max catches up and stops, panting, at Chloe’s side.  
  
“You’re getting slow in your old age,” Chloe teases, eliciting a playful shove from Max.  
  
“Shut up, you have longer legs than I do!” Max complains, still out of breath, but grinning. “So this is where the treasure map is hidden?”  
  
“X marks the spot!” Chloe exclaims, her eyes lit up with excitement. “Besides, I totally buried it here yesterday. Now we just gotta dig it up!”  
  
“You mean _I_ have to dig it up,” Max says pointedly, as Chloe perches herself on the driftwood with an expectant look.  
  
“Well, I _am_ the captain.”  
  
“You’re _always_ the captain.”  
  
“Yeah, ‘cause I’m still the oldest, birthday girl!” She hops down from the log. “But I guess I’ll help you dig. I mean, we’re kinda in a hurry here. There’s no time to waste!” She crouches down in the sand, staring up at Max with a look of exaggerated urgency. “Blackbeard’s probably only one step behind us!”  
  
Max rolls her eyes, but she can’t help but smile at Chloe’s enthusiasm for the game. They’d been playing pirates together for years, and though they were starting to get a little old for it, Chloe didn’t seem willing to let go of the tradition just yet. She kneels beside Chloe and together, sun warming their backs, they start scooping up handfuls of dry sand. After a minute, a rolled-up piece of paper begins to emerge. Max pulls it out of the sand and unrolls it, revealing a laminated poster; a map of Arcadia Bay. A spot in the woods near the lighthouse has been marked on it with a drawn-on skull and crossbones.  
  
“Chloe, did you steal this from the Two Whales?”  
  
Chloe gives a little huff of resentment. “No, Max, I didn’t steal it; I _borrowed_ it from the Two Whales. We’re pirates, not thieves.”  
  
“I’m pretty sure pirates-” Max begins to interject, but Chloe cuts her off.  
  
“Anyways, you’re missing the point. Didn’t I tell you I had something cool planned for your birthday? Well this is your present!”  
  
Max blinks, confused. “My present is a treasure map?”  
  
Chloe groans. “No, silly,” she says in a tone of mock exasperation. “This is the map _to_ your present.”  
  
“Okay, so what’s my present, then?”  
  
“Patience, first mate Max. We’re getting to that. True treasures aren’t won easily. I have the adventure of a lifetime planned for us today!”  
  
“Lead the way then, Captain Chloe,” Max says with a smile.  
  
Chloe strikes a heroic pose, arm outstretched, the coastal breeze whipping back her long brown hair. “Next stop, adventure!” she crows, making Max giggle.  
  
Max drapes her arm around her best friend’s shoulders. “I may be thirteen now, Chloe, but I’ll never get tired of going on adventures with you, I promise.”  
  
“Dude, you better not. Pinky swear on it?” She extends her little finger. “Adventurers ‘til the end?”  
  
“Adventurers ‘til the end!” Max agrees, and as they hook their fingers together, everything freezes once more, and the grown-up Max watches her happy childhood memory swept away in the winds of time.  
  
_That was the last birthday either of us spent together_ , Max realizes. _The last one before everything changed_. She suddenly feels overwhelmingly alone, lost and adrift in time. She watches as her childhood continues to unfold in reverse, and throughout the collage of memories, Chloe is a constant. Chloe and Max, playing pirates in their tree fort. Chloe and Max, having sleepovers at Chloe’s house and staying up half the night watching Disney movies with the TV volume turned low. Chloe and Max, in class together in the elementary school where they first met.  
  
Max thinks about Chloe as she left her, facing down the storm alone, and she wants to be back at her side again more than she’s wanted anything in her entire life.  
  
She’s getting younger now. The rewind is speeding up, faster and faster, and she’s running out of timeline. She’s a small child now, and when she blinks she’s only a baby, and then she sees the walls of a hospital surround her and she braces herself for whatever happens next, and all she can think about is Chlo-  
  
It’s like hitting a brick wall at no velocity whatsoever, not so much an impact as a sudden shift in reality. The whirlwind trip through time reaches its conclusion at last and everything just…ends. Everything except Max. _I’m still here_ , she thinks, but ‘here’ is nowhere at all. She tries to call out but there are no sounds. She tries to step forward but there’s nothing to stand on. She’s floating, weightless, in a pitch-black void without air, without time. Then she flips herself over, like an astronaut spinning in zero-gravity, and she sees it.  
  
_Holy shit…I’m not in my timeline anymore, I’m_ outside _of it_.  
  
Spread beneath her as far as her eye can see is a vast pattern of light, like a neural map in three dimensions. A single long straight line shines brightest, and branching off from it in all directions are other lines, with yet more lines branching off from those, offshoots of her timeline. As she looks closer, she sees that the main line of her timeline isn’t straight at all, but bends back and forth, zigzagging like a long band of rubber stretched almost to its breaking point. Divorced from the rest of the branches are a couple of separate lines, alternates that she created but didn’t dwell in long, malformed timelines with no beginning and no end, dark and unlit. And they’re not alone; other branches are flickering and going out, being swallowed by the blackness.  
  
Her timeline, her entire reality, is fading like a Polaroid picture being shaken in reverse, particles of time escaping their constraints and disintegrating. Form replaced with void.  
  
A storm is growing, filling the corners of her eyes, whirling through her, clawing at her mind. She understands now, too late. Her power didn’t just bring a tornado down to devastate Arcadia Bay. She’s inadvertently doomed everything. She pushed time, and time pushed back, and she fought it too hard, went too far, and now she’s reaping the devastation she has sown. Time is removing her, pressing the hard reset button, wiping away its mistake.  
  
Horror and despair fill her, and she’s ready to give up, to accept her fate and fade away, she’s about to let go…and then she sees it, off on the horizon of her primary timeline, all the way back the way she came.  
  
A tiny pinprick of blue, impossibly small, flickering like a lantern left in the window to guide weary travelers home through the storm.  
  
_Chloe_ , she breathes, and the little blue light burns through her fear and resignation like the rays of the rising sun burning through the ocean fog, replacing her despair with determination.  
  
_Screw this. I’m not leaving her again._  
  
If reality is going to come crumbling down around her ears then there is only one place she wants to be when that happens, and it sure as hell isn’t here. Time can fight back all it wants, but it will bend to her will. It _must_. She is Max Caulfield, Time Destroyer, and _she makes the rules around here_.  
  
And with that thought, she dives, straight down towards the fading timeline, bursting into the timestream, moving back the way she came, faster than she thought possible. She is reversing the reversal, time blurring around her, impossible to form into coherent images. Her eyes remain fixed on the blue light at the end of the tunnel, the eye of her hurricane, growing larger and larger, filling her vision, almost there now-  
  
With a jolt, she wakes up. The wind and rain is whipping her face, the lighthouse looming above her, the ground beneath her is tangibly, mercifully solid.  
  
“Max? Max, can you hear me? Please, say something!” Chloe is staring at her, clothes soaking wet, hair disheveled, concern and fear clouding her face, and she is the most beautiful thing Max has ever seen.  
  
“Chloe!” Max launches herself into Chloe’s arms, burying her face in Chloe’s wet blue hair, breathing in the scent of her, holding on with all her strength as if afraid she might be ripped away again at any moment.  
  
“Oh thank god,” Chloe gasps, clutching her equally tight. “Don’t you ever do that again, okay?”  
  
“Chloe, I…I was so lost. I got stuck, in the rewind, and- and I couldn’t stop, and I saw you I- I saw _us_ , but I didn’t know what to do, I thought I - that I would never-“ The words come tumbling out, increasingly incoherent, the experience impossible to articulate.  
  
“Shhh,” Chloe soothes her, “It’s okay, Max, you’re here now, it’s going to be okay.”  
  
But it’s not. Nothing’s changed. She can _feel_ it, the world around her thinning by the second. All she’s done is bought herself a proper ending.  
  
“No…” she stumbles to explain, pulling away, looking her best friend in the eyes for what will be the last time. “It’s not just a storm, Chloe. It’s the end. Of everything. Time itself…” Chloe is staring at her with a shocked expression and Max can’t tell if it’s because the meaning of her words is sinking in or if Chloe just thinks she’s gone mad. “I caused this, C-Chloe, it’s all my fault! I destroyed everything, I’m-I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”  
  
Her eyes swim with tears and her voice breaks, and just as the first sob threatens to tear its way out of her throat, Chloe cuts it off with a kiss.  
  
For a second, Max freezes, all thoughts obliterated from her brain, and then she is kissing back, hard, hands wrapping around Chloe and digging into the hair on the back of her head as Chloe pulls her tighter, holding her lips to Chloe’s as if they are the only thing left in the world and if she ever pulls away, everything will cease to be.  
  
The tornado is gone from view now. The sounds of the storm, so deafening a moment ago, are growing faint, as if a million miles away. The light of day, already dimmed by clouds, has disappeared completely. The ground beneath them is no longer there. Nothing remains at all now, except for Max and Chloe and their first and final kiss, holding on desperately to each other as the world dissolves around them.  
  
After a brief, eternal moment, the world will begin again. Time will go on, though from an earlier point. A fresh start, a new timeline with no complications, with no mistakes, with no young gods ripping holes in the fabric of reality. With no Max Caulfield.  
  
But on the outskirts of time’s rebirth, just outside reality, is a little piece of time, a discarded and indestructible fragment of a broken timeline. And there, Max Caulfield and Chloe Price remain inseparably locked in an eternal embrace, a microsecond of a last blissful moment, unchanging and forever.  
  
If one only knows when to look.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing something for Life is Strange, and a more ambitious story than any I've written in quite some time. I sincerely hope you enjoyed it, and would welcome any feedback you have for me.
> 
> Special thanks to Tumblr users shorthairednymph and beepish for feedback, editing help, and inspiration (check out beepish's own LiS fic at her AO3 account of the same name)!
> 
> A brief note on timelines/headcanons: According to the game, Chloe was born on March 11th, 1994, and Max was born on September 21st the following year. Both William's death and Max's move to Seattle took place in 2008, and I wanted the scene in the second flashback to take place on Max's birthday in September of that year but prior to the death of Chloe's dad. So for the purposes of this fic I'm assuming that William died around October, and Max moved away later in the year, in December (I also kind of like the idea that the late-October events of the game took place on or around the 5-year anniversary of the death of Chloe's father, because time has a strange and ironic symmetry).


End file.
